


The Strength of a Pack

by natcat5



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Mourning, Multi, Pack Cuddles, Pack Feels, Post Nogitsune, Post season finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-28
Updated: 2014-03-28
Packaged: 2018-01-17 07:23:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1378855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natcat5/pseuds/natcat5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scott is pretty sure that his heart stops.</p>
<p>He sees Stiles’s eyes slip shut, sees his friend slip out of Lydia’s grasp and crash bonelessly to the ground, and everything just…stops. His ears fill with white noise, his chest tightens and he can’t get himself to breathe. Can’t remember how to breathe. How to move. How to exist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Strength of a Pack

**Author's Note:**

> and you cry and your tears are I can't believe I wrote more Teen Wolf fanfiction

Scott is pretty sure that his heart stops.

He sees Stiles’s eyes slip shut, sees his friend slip out of Lydia’s grasp and crash bonelessly to the ground, and everything just… _stops._ His ears fill with white noise, his chest tightens and he can’t get himself to breathe. Can’t _remember_ how to breathe. How to move. How to _exist._

Because he can’t _process_ this. He can’t understand how Stiles can be dead. It doesn’t seem possible- a world where two of the people he cares about most are dead. It’s laughably cruel and completely unfathomable to him. He can’t comprehend that they’re _both_ gone.

Scott is pretty sure that his heart stops. He _knows_ that he stops breathing, stops moving, and all his senses seem to shut down. His body is numb and he doesn’t feel Kira shaking his arm. There are black spots obscuring his vision, and his ears are stuffed with cotton. It takes him almost a minute to register Lydia’s voice, yelling at him, her lips a red splash of colour in the world that has washed out before his eyes.

Lydia.

_Lydia._ The Banshee. The wailing woman.

He didn’t hear her scream.

She didn’t _scream._

Air reenters his lungs and his senses jolt back. He hears what Lydia’s saying now-

_“Scott, Scott he’s not dead. He’s not dead Scott-”_

-and falls to his knees beside Stiles, hands raised nervously, like he’s afraid to touch.

“Not dead,” he repeats hoarsely, and Lydia nods, her own hand on top of Stiles chest, on top of his heart, like she doesn’t quite believe it herself.

But Scott can hear, can hear Stiles’s heartbeat, stronger than it’s been in days. Can hear his quiet breathing, steady. He’s still pale and gaunt and looks like a corpse but he’s _not_ one. He’s _alive._

Scott doesn’t cry, but it’s a close thing. He takes off his jacket and stuffs it under Stiles’s head because he needs to do something to stop his hands from shaking. Kira is trembling too, and she has a hand braced against the lockers, like she’s barely keeping herself standing. Isaac looks calm, but there’s a hollow look in his eyes that makes Scott think it’s not that he’s okay but more like he’s got his emotions on lockdown. Lydia’s lips are pursed and her heart is racing, but she’s steady. She’s steady and her eyes are dry and Scott thinks about how she was holding Stiles the whole time. How she spent the whole battle letting him lean on her, carrying him, supporting him when he could barely keep himself standing.

He thinks she might be Stiles’s anchor, without either of them realizing it, and the thought sends a surge of affection through him. For Stiles. For Lydia. For _pack._

It’s accompanied by a heavy wave of sorrow and pain however, because Allison… _Allison._ Stiles isn’t dead, but she is, and it hurts, it hurts and it hurts worse when they’re all together like this. When all the members of their pack are here and she _isn’t._

Losing a member of the pack is like losing a limb, and while Scott is thankful that he only lost one, and not two, he still feels like his world is unsteady, and like his heart is liable to stop again at any moment.

\--

Something inside Scott says that Stiles should spend his first nogitsune-free night in his own bed, but it’s out of the question for obvious reasons. It’s too much to even consider being apart right now, and the Sheriff is still dealing with the aftermath of the attacks on the station and the hospital. Reassured that the nogitsune was gone and Stiles was still okay, he’d been free to focus on the numerous lives that had been lost to the chaos demon that night.

It’s not the first time they’ve converted the McCall living room into a pack den, but it’s the first time they’ve done it with such conviction, with such sorrow, and with the bonds between them so tight. Pack sleepovers were always lighthearted, full of cuddling, laughter, bad jokes and bad movies. Easy to pass off as a normal social gathering, rather than something born out of supernatural bonds. But this night, this night after they’re safe for the first time in months. After they can finally mourn their fallen properly. This night is different.

They _cling_ to each other. Stiles collapses immediately and Lydia goes down with him, curling herself around him protectively as he plummets into much needed sleep. Her legs intertwine with his and her fingers bunch into the fabric of his shirt, face buried into his neck. Scott lies on Stiles’s other side, wrapping his arms around the two of them and pulling them into his chest. Isaac is on the other side of Scott, curled into a ball, and his presence makes _her_ absence all the more noticeable. She used to lie between them, or sprawl over top of both of them. She used to curl up on Isaac’s chest and intertwine her hands with Scott’s and smile.

And she’s _gone._

It’s a raw, open wound. Throbbing with pain and stubbornly refusing to heal. Because he can _feel_ Stiles and Lydia and Isaac- and dully, at the back of his mind, Kira and Derek- but he can’t feel _Allison._ She’s _gone._

It’s her absence that makes him really notice, that makes him recognize that they are connected now. That these pack cuddles are more than sleepovers, more than casual hangouts. They are intertwined and interlocked and all tangled up with one another. And he can  _feel_ them.

He feels Lydia’s pain, that she’s hidden so well. Her anguish at not being able to save Allison, even when she sensed her death was coming. The lingering terror at almost losing Stiles, at being helpless when he was moments away from impaling himself. Her pure _relief_ at the fox being gone, at Stiles being alive and whole and here, tinged with sorrow of Allison _not._ He feels Isaac’s pulsing, constant pain. Muted, because the other werewolf is trying so hard to ignore it, so hard to keep it in. And even though he’s asleep, he can feel Stiles’s exhaustion, the frantic joy of being _free,_ and the bitter curdles of guilt, mixed with sorrow, at all of the people who died because of a monster wearing his face.

And Scott knows they can feel his own heartbreak. The way it feels like his world has shattered. Because somewhere at the back of his mind, in the depths of his heart, he always believed they’d end up together. He always thought they’d gravitate back to one another. And for her to be _gone…_ to have died when he wasn’t there, to have been killed because he wasn’t _fast enough…_ it’s enough to break him completely. And he _knows_ they can feel that.

But they can also feel his _strength._ His willingness to move on, move forward. To never forget her and how her discovery saved them. To never forget her smile, her laugh, her face when they made love, and her face when she fired her arrows to protect them. His desire to never stop fighting, to carry on and honour her memory and protect everyone in Beacon Hills who can’t protect themselves.

And he can feel Stiles’s vow to _never_ let it happen again, to be stronger, to be able to save himself and save others. And Lydia’s assertion that she will stop her screams before they start, that she _will_ save the people her powers tell her will die. That she will fight and be strong for the girl who taught her strength in the first place. And he feels Isaac’s cold determination to _not break._ There’s anger and hurt but Isaac has lost people before. He’s lost people and he never thought he’d lose her but he can do it. He can _live._ Because just because she’s gone doesn’t mean he’s alone.

They’re not alone.

They can feel each other, they can feel each other’s pain and each other’s strength, and _that’s_ what these pack piles are for. That’s why they meet and curl into each other’s warmth and cling.

Scott feels Isaac clutch at shirt and bury his face into his neck, and he tangles his legs with the other boy’s, lifting one hand to lace his fingers with Lydia.

The pain is amplified fourfold, but so is the willingness to move forward.

They are pack, and they _will_ survive.

**Author's Note:**

> This was just a really fast thing I whipped up.   
> It was originally going to be from Lydia's point of view but _that_ turned into something else entirely and will be posted as a separate fic.


End file.
